


Little Pistol

by Jikanis



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5 Years Later, Angst, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Aziraphale to the Rescue (Good Omens), Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hell, Hell Kidnaps Crowley, Holy Water, Holy Water Pistols, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mother Mother (Band) - Freeform, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), after armageddon, non-binary Beelzebub, non-binary Michael, trial, water pistols
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24094945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jikanis/pseuds/Jikanis
Summary: Aziraphale wakes up in the cottage he shares with Crowley in South Downs, five years after Armageddon-that-wasn't. Crowley is missing, and Aziraphale is willing, as always, to go to Hell and back to rescue him.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	Little Pistol

**Author's Note:**

> It has been a long time since I have written much of anything, but it has been half my life ago since I wrote fan fiction. It is loosely inspired by the Mother Mother song "Little Pistol," and was originally supposed to be a lot darker. I didn't have the heart to do that to everyone else during quarantine, let alone myself.

The gentle light of morning glinted across the English channel, and illuminated rolling green hills, carved into white, chalky cliffs by six millennia of hydrological erosion. Sea birds with black wings drifted along on the breeze, appearing not to care where the wind took them, but little is ever as it appears. What humans mistake for the simple, nonchalantness of nature is often the complex and instinctual calculation of survival: conserve energy, strike at the opportune moment. At that moment, a small crab wandered out of its rocky shelter in the sand. It was doing its own calculations when the black-winged seabird dove out of the sky and picked up its breakfast.

On one of those hills, at the end of a narrow road, sat a tiny cottage, surrounded by a waist-high fence and the most verdant and beautiful plants in all of England. The ornamental shrubs and ivies were also the most terrified, but the roses in the garden were miraculously well-cared for; the slugs never went hungry, yet the flowers bloomed and sparkled with morning dew, nonetheless. A black 1926 Bentley sat in the driveway. Anyone who saw it would believe that it was meticulously cared for, not even a scratch. Anyone who saw it would definitely not believe that, five years ago, it had been on fire after driving through the dread sigil Odegra, which had caught fire after M25 motorists began chanting, “Hail the great beast, destroyer of worlds.” No one, at all, would ever believe that.

But the sunlight had just begun to shine through the window, on the platinum blond curls of a man who would believe it, because he witnessed the car exploding in the aftermath. He smiled softly as he woke from his gentle sleep. He did not need to sleep — he was, after all, an angel — but he had taken up the habit, because the demon, with whom he shared the cottage, loved sleeping so much. He rolled over to catch a glimpse of his demon’s sleeping form, to run curious fingers through a mess of fire-red hair as he had so many mornings before—

Crowley wasn’t there.

“That’s odd,” Aziraphale mumbled to himself. His nose crinkled as he ran through his memories. Crowley hadn’t told him he was going anywhere, this morning. Aziraphale peered across the room at the calendar. Then, he realized what morning it was.

“Wiley old serpent,” Aziraphale chuckled to himself, eyes shining like small suns, the apples of his cheeks round and rosy, “He remembered our anniversary.”

Aziraphale tumbled out of bed in his white nightshirt, shuffled on his white bunny slippers, and hurried to the bedroom door. “Crowley, my dear!” he called, as he turned the corner into the kitchen, delighted in the anticipation of what surprise Crowley had set up for him. Maybe some strawberry crepes? Mimosas? All packed for a jaunt to some other corner of the world, not that it mattered where they were, when they had eachother.

“Crowley, my dear, I cannot wait to see what you have planned—” Aziraphale started, but he entered the kitchen and realized he was speaking to an empty room. “Crowley?” He called, again, to no answer.

Aziraphale looked outside, and saw the Bentley sitting in the driveway. Wherever he had gone, it wouldn’t have been far. While Crowley could use demonic miracles to come and go as he pleased, he was, at his core, a speed demon, and forcing other motorists to share the road with him was his preferred form of torture. Aziraphale stepped outside onto the porch overlooking the garden. He still did not see Crowley, anywhere. “Maybe he left a note?” Aziraphale thought to himself, as he wandered back inside. He checked the night stand, the bathroom mirror, the dining room table, and the refrigerator door, but there was no note.

Coming back into the kitchen, he noticed that the basket of apples he and Crowley had picked from the garden the night before had started rotting, consumed by maggots and surrounded by flies. The color drained from his cheeks—the apples had been perfectly ripe the night before, not a bruise nor a squishy spot in sight. His fingers trembled as he picked up the rotary phone handset and dialed Crowley’s cell number. He heard its digital ring and vibrating in the bedroom. Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead as his stomach dropped, heart began to flutter, and breath became short and shallow.

Crowley was gone.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Not only was Crowley gone, but Hell had taken him.

“Demon Crowley!” Beelzebub buzzed, “You are on trial for treazzzson.”

“Again? I thought we had settled this, already. You stay out of our business, and we’ll stay out of yours,” Crowley, bound in hellfire-forged chains, recalled.

“We have intelligence that suggezzzsts that _you_ were never on trial for these crimezzzs. What is that angel’s name, again? Azzziraphale? We know he was the one who was down here, last time,” Beelzebub sighed, exasperated.

Crowley’s jaw slacked open as he spoke, “Um, um, well, how ridiculous does that sound? I wasn’t put on trial before? Of course I was on trial before,” he stammered. “The thing with the holy water bathtub and the rubber duck and the Archangel, Michael, miracaling me a towel.”

“You survived it once, Crowley, so there is no reason you should be afraid to do it again,” Beelzebub snickered.

Crowley’s mind raced. How did they find out? Had something given them away? Aziraphale had never been that good of an actor. Acting is just lying and angels are notoriously bad at lying, holier-than-thou lot of them all. What the heaven had Aziraphale done to give them away? Heaven. If Hell knew, so might Heaven. Fearful rage bubbled up behind Crowley’s eyes.

“What evidence do you have that it wasn’t me at the trial after Armageddont, Armageddon-that-wasn’t, that one Saturday, whatever we’re calling it?” Crowley tried to bluff cool, nonchalantness.

“Gabriel and I had started discussing your trials over drinks, last weekend. The idea that you had gone native could certainly explain your surviving Holy Water. When you put a human in Holy Water, it is just called a baptiszzzm. But the Angel surviving Hellfire was impossible. A human in Hellfire still burnszzz.”

“Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit,” Crowley winced as he thought. “Did Gabriel come to the same, uh, conclusion?” Crowley asked, hopefully.

“Hmm? How should I know? If he hasn’t figured it out after this long, there is no point in me telling him, is there? He was there, for Satan’s sake,” Beelzebub snapped. “It is my job to keep the demons of Hell in line, not to make sure the idiots in Heaven keep their lot in order, too.”

Crowley allowed himself a measured sigh of relief. Hell had him, but Aziraphale was still safe, for now.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Aziraphale huddled on the kitchen floor, hands over his face, phone handset dangling limply by its chord in front of him. Hell had obviously taken Crowley, but how? But why? There had been no warning. “It doesn’t matter, now,” Aziraphale whimpered. He gathered himself up off the floor and onto his still trembling knees. With a deep breath, he went to the wardrobe and donned his usual white shirt, tartan bowtie, tan velvet vest, khaki trousers, and light trench coat. He wrung his hands nervously as he stared at his worry-wrinkled face in the mirror. He looked out the window to the small stone table and chairs next to his roses, where he and Crowley had been enjoying another bottle of 1921 Chateauneuf de Pas the night before. Tears welled up in Aziraphale’s eyes as he remembered gazing into his demon’s yellow eyes, stroking his slender fingers intertwined in his own. What he would give to have Crowley back in the garden, now.

“What would Crowley do?” he almost shouted at himself in the mirror. He thought back to that time in St. James’s Park. Insurance. Holy Water. One last, unusual addition to the wardrobe: a pistol belt with two plastic water pistols, filled with only the holiest of water.

“It’s time to lick some serious butt.” No one was there to correct him.

——————————————————————————————————————————

An angel with two holy water-filled pistols stood in the lobby of Shard Tower, the tallest building in all of London. Humans believe the tower is 95 stories tall. Little do they know, it both goes much higher and its foundation stretches much lower than they could ever imagine, or would ever like to. Of course, an angel can’t just sink through the floor to get to Hell the way a demon could. Aziraphale looked around the lobby and found a maintenance access door. Instead of the normal warnings about high voltage and asbestos and “authorized personnel only” that usually don the entrances to maintenance spaces, there was a sign that read, “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”[1]

[1] All the mechanics of the world should take note. No one who enters a mechanical room to fix something ever does it the first time—there is something about passing through a mechanical room door that makes sure that the problem does not match the tools and parts they have on hand, and most likely, not the ones in storage, either. After leaving to get the right parts, the next time they come back, there is a different problem, entirely. Crowley had been quite proud of that one, the curse of the mechanical room door.

Aziraphale opened the door and ran down the seemingly endless flights of stairs. Confidence replaced his nerves, little by little, with every flight he cleared without opposition. The further he descended, the more the lights flickered, and the more the smell of mildew and decay wafted through the ever-thicker air. Finally, he got to the bottom. As he was about to push open the steel fire door, a rabbit-eared demon opened it. Aziraphale gasped in panic.

Forgetting the pistols, and falling back onto his polite nature, Aziraphale stammered, at a whisper, “Hi, hi, hello. I am looking for the demon C-Crowley. Do you know where I might, I might be able to find him?”

The demon, seemingly either oblivious or desensitized to angels coming down the maintenance access, replied, “Oh, Crowley? You’ve come to see the remake of the show, then? The trial should be much better, this time, since Lord Beelzebub actually got the demon this time, instead of that imposter angel. Go on through there. All the demons are watching.”

Aziraphale’s heart started racing again. “Th-thank you,” he said as his body rushed through the door, his mind not having a chance to catch up. His feet ran down the cold, bare concrete hallway. He heard the buzzing of Beelzebub’s voice and came to a slow. He had gotten this far, but did not really have a plan. “What am I going to do with two water pistols against all of the demons of Hell?” he berated himself, as he thought. He took a deep breath, knowing there was no turning back now. It was face all of Hell or face all of eternity without Crowley. It was an easy choice, even as his palms seemed to ooze holy water.

Pistols drawn, he peered around the corner and saw Crowley in chains. “Psst,” Aziraphale tried to get his attention, to no avail. “Pssst,” he hissed, a little louder, pistols raised. Crowley glanced his direction, then did a double take. Crowley’s eyes widened.

“Aziraphale?” Someone who was not Crowley said. Someone who was not in front of, but behind, Aziraphale said. The Archangel Michael said.

Aziraphale turned ashen grey as he hurriedly stowed the pistols back into their holsters and turned around. “M-Michael! Fancy meeting you here. Been quite a while, hasn’t it? Everything all right in Heaven, I imagine?” Words kept falling out of Aziraphale’s panicked mouth.

Michael had a pitcher in one hand and wordlessly grabbed Aziraphale with the other, dragging him the rest of the way into the chamber where Crowley was being tried. Michael brought him in front of Beelzebub. Crowley’s eyes settled on his angel with tangible fear and sadness. “Looks like someone was trying to interrupt the trial, Bee.” They pushed Aziraphale a few steps forward.

“Crowley!” Beelzebub mocked, “The angel is attempting to rescue you, again.” Apathetically, they continued. “Michael, what are you planning to do him?”

Crowley gazed on at Aziraphale, in shock and heartbreak and terror. Michael replied, “I did not expect to see him again this soon, after the Hellfire incident. I expected him to end up here, but not like this. Maybe on a more permanent basis.”

Aziraphale turned to Michael and protested, “I am an angel, for Heaven’s sake! All I wanted was to protect humanity! Protect the greater good!”

“Quiet!” Beelzebub shouted. “Would you like me to take care of him, since your department apparently lacks quality control?”

Michael scoffed, “Fine. Less paperwork for us, anyway. As far as we are concerned, he is one of yours to deal with, anyway.” Michael turned and began filling the tub with Holy Water, “He’s not an angel, anymore.”

Aziraphale turned to Crowley, disappointment at his failure lingering in eyes that refused to meet his demon’s. “Angel,” he said softly, with all of the care in the world, taking no heed to who was looking on. Aziraphale still couldn’t bring himself to look at the demon. “Angel, I am so unbelievably happy to see you. I never thought I would, again. And I certainly never wanted you to be caught up in this mess. But what are you doing down here?”

Michael finished filling the tub with a final tinkling splash from the pitcher, turned, and walked back upstairs to their own office with a nod of acknowledgement to Beelzebub. Aziraphale remembered what it was he had come here to do, and subtly brushed back his long coat to reveal pistol belt. Crowley’s lips pursed, both perplexed and impressed.

“Demon Crowley, I maintain your sentence to extinction by Holy Water, since your sentence was never carried out after your trial. Hastur, remove his chains,” Beelzebub commanded. “Any final words?”

“And no funny business about a new jacket, this time,” Hastur interjected.

Crowley stared Aziraphale in the eye. “I lost my best friend once, hardest half hour of my life. I will be damned if I do the same to him.”

Aziraphale whipped around, and backed himself between Crowley and Hastur and the bathtub. “Please, just let us go and live our life together. We’re not bothering you. We’re not bothering anybody.”

“You will alwayzzz be in the way of The Great Plan,” Beelzebub responded. “Hastur, pleaszzze remove the angel; Dagon, continue with the execution.”

As soon as Hastur stepped away from Crowley and toward Aziraphale, he drew the holy water pistols, pointing one at Hastur and the other toward Dagon and Beelzebub. “These funny pistols are filled with Holy Water! I do not want to do this.” Aziraphale’s hands were shaking, and his eyes misted over, “Please, hand over Crowley and let us leave.”

Shocked, Beelzebub nodded.

Crowley took the window while he was unmanned to slither behind Aziraphale. They both began backing toward the hallway, Aziraphale’s hands shaking, but pistols unwavering in their targets and resolve. As soon as they backed around the corner, Aziraphale holstered the pistols, as Crowley grabbed his hand and they ran for the maintenance door.

They burst through the door in the lobby, looking back to make sure they weren’t followed. Aziraphale grabbed Crowley and pulled him into a warm embrace. “Crowley, my dear.”

Crowley stared at Aziraphale. His angel had literally gone to Hell and back to save him. “Angel, I cannot even begin to thank you. Kind of brazen, trying to ambush all of Hell with just a pair of water pistols, don’t you think?” he said with an unwaveringly proud smirk.

“Oh, Crowley. I didn’t know what else to do. I woke up and you weren’t there and the apples were rotting, and I knew they had taken you,” Aziraphale replied, the panic of remembering in his voice. He looked outside — it was nearly dark out. “Are we sure they won’t follow us, now that they know the first time…” he trailed off.

“Can’t be sure of anything anymore, Angel, but what I am sure of is that it is our anniversary, and I would like to tempt you to some dinner. But first,” Crowley pulled a small, velveteen box out of his jacket pocket. “this is not how I intended to do this. I intended to shower you with cakes and pastries and a delicious compote from all of the berries in the garden, shower you in rose petals. I was out picking them when—ah, well, nevermind.” He got down on one knee, and opened the box. His voice shook, “After six thousand years, and going to Hell and back twice for me…”

Aziraphale grabbed his hands and sniffled, tears streaming from his eyes, “Yes, my dear. There is no one else with whom I could imagine spending eternity.” He planted a chaste kiss on Crowley’s smooth lips. “Let’s have dinner at home, tonight, in the garden.”

They called a cab back to their little cottage in the South Downs. When they got home, first, they threw the rotten apples in the rubbish bin. Aziraphale hung up his pistol belt, praying that he would never need it again. Then they went on to eating a candlelit dinner at the little stone table, next to the rose bushes. The red roses picked up the red-orange light from the flame, and glowed as though they were on fire, themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a very fun five hours of writing, for me. There is definitely room for improvement, but I'm just so excited to have created something again, that it seemed best to just get it out there. Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good enough, as they say. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
